Kun zhi ji

Two CFPs I want to remember

2011-05-27T18:43:00.000+08:00

"Memories and Violence" (due date for article, August 1)
7th Intercultural Rhetoric and Discourse Conference (due date for abstract, November 1, 2011)

A couple of interesting posts on the management of history

2011-05-22T02:00:00.001+08:00

I have nothing at this point to add to these posts; I just found them interesting:

"Managing History in China" (井底之蛙)
About problems with the management of the Forbidden City: "China has lots of history. 5,000 years of it, in fact. Historical Preservation, or Cultural Resources Management, or whatever you want to call it is something they have less of as shown by recent events in the Great Within. Basically, the Beijing Forbidden City Cultural Development Company has been accused of setting up a special club for rich people inside the Forbidden City. ..."
"Mixing Up Taipei's History" (Patrick Cowsill)
About the possibly ideologically motivated historical inaccuracies in the official English description of the Red House, a historical landmark in Taipei.

This is cool... Oberlin's Digital Collections

2007-01-12T01:57:00.000+08:00

Working on preparations for my trip to Oberlin's archives next month, I came across this in Oberlin's Digital Collections. I feel as though if I wait long enough, I won't even have to go to the archives to do my research--it'll all be digitized!

The document I just linked to is entitled "The Shansi Memorial Association: A Strategic Missionary Opportunity." It was published in 1908 and basically outlines the history of Oberlin's missionary work at Shanxi, China; the "martyrdom" of the missionaries in Shanxi in 1900 (during the Boxer Uprising); the restoration of the Oberlin mission in Shanxi in 1903; and a plan to establish a Christian school system in Shanxi via the work of the Shansi Memorial Association. It ends with a somewhat indirect request for money:

The most urgent need is the erection of an Academy building at Taiku for which $10,000 are necessary. We have the land and the site has already been chosen. Mr. K'ung [Hsiang-hsi*] now has a class of ten boys who are taking up Academy work in a small and uncomfortable building, and has been obliged to turn away many children of influential families because of the lack of suitable quarters and equipment. There is also need of a budget of $1,000 for general expenses and for the equipment and enlargement of some of the day schools. It is gratifying to have the salaries of our representatives assumed by individuals, so that all of the money contributed by the Oberlin constituency may be applied directly to the work. (15)

I wonder how typical this kind of "indirect" request for donations was at the time. At any rate, it will provide some more background for my study.

*K'ung Hsiang-hsi, or Kong Xiangxi, was a Taigu graduate who got an M.A. from Oberlin and returned to China to establish the Ming Xian school in Taigu. Later, he became married one of the Song sisters (Song Ailing) and became involved with the Nationalist government. He's pictured here (on the right).

[dissertating]

Back to the archives

2006-03-31T01:56:00.000+08:00

Just a short note to say that I'm working the archival documents again. (Note that I say "working them", not "working with them", though that is true, too.) I found a couple of interesting articles in the student/faculty magazine Tung Feng (東風). The two articles are from 1959 and 1960 and focus on the advantages and disadvantages of a university with a "mixed" (foreign and Chinese) staff. The articles themselves are actually some compositions written by students from the Junior English class. Some of the advantages mentioned by the students echo the development rhetoric I was mentioning in a couple of earlier posts. For instance, students suggest that having foreign teachers can help introduce students to new ideas that can help modernize Taiwan/China. They also suggest that it can help them learn about other ways of thinking. This sounds a little like Lerner's "empathy" to me.

There are a couple of directions I could take all of this in, and I'll try several on for size. To the extent that I can find out, for instance, I want to suggest why the editors of Tung Feng would choose to publish two articles/collections of student essays on mixed faculty at that particular time. And I want to see if there is any relation between the time of publication and other discussions that were going on in the magazine and also in the rep letters and other correspondance of the Oberlin reps. It might be a long shot, but it's a way of getting at the issue of what the publication of the student writing is doing in addition to what it's saying.

(Ignore the "continue" link below...)

A note on the uses of empathy in Cold War rhetoric

2006-03-24T16:02:00.000+08:00

This is going to be a short note, actually. I commented in my last post on the use of "empathy" as a keyword for development scholars following Daniel Lerner's ideas about how to modernize traditional societies. Writing during the 1950s and 1960s, Lerner describes empathy as key to getting people in un(der)developed societies to consider alternatives to their current situations. Starosta indirectly criticizes the "Lernerian" type of empathy as an attempt by Western rhetors to create dissatisfaction and alienation among people of other societies.

Another instance of empathy in Cold War rhetoric has come to my attention via Christina Klein's Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961 (which I've also written about here). Klein cites a 1957 speech by Francis Wilcox ("a mid-level State Department official") that was published in the Department of State Bulletin's July 29, 1957 issue. The speech, entitled "Foreign Policy and Some Implications for Education", argues that in the current conflict with the Soviet Union, Americans needed to "'cultivate the quality of empathy--the ability to put yourself in the other fellow's position and see things from his point of view'" (qtd Klein 22). He recommended that providing Americans with an "'education for overseasmanship'" that focused on the cultivation of empathy was crucial to curbing the influence of Soviet propaganda. If Americans, who would be increasingly living and working abroad, had this capacity, they could more easily help in the American project of providing people in newly decolonized countries with alternatives to Communist ideology. Klein characterizes Wilcox's rhetoric as part of what she calls a "global imaginary of integration" that contrasts with the "global imaginary of containment" that is usually considered the dominant strain of American Cold War rhetoric.

The fact that both Americans and the people of developing countries are called upon to cultivate empathy is not something I've seen yet in my reading. I think one of the things I'll have to consider about this, though, concerns the different objectives that empathy was supposed to serve, and the different activities to which empathy was linked. (Wonder if it's possible to do an activity system analysis of empathy? Hmmm...)

[Cold War Orientalism] [development communication] [dissertating] [empathy]

Attempts to piece together some thoughts about development communication and intercultural rhetoric

2006-03-20T14:20:00.000+08:00

(Wow. That's a long title.)

I've gone back to William Starosta's article "On Intercultural Rhetoric" to try to understand it in terms of some of the ideas about development communication that I've been reading recently. I think I understand better now the context out of which Starosta was coming and what he was reacting against in that chapter. As Starosta writes in a later essay, "On the Intersection of Rhetoric and Intercultural Communication: A 25-Year Personal Retrospective" (1999), his characterization and critique of intercultural rhetoric grew out of his experiences studying "rural development in the 'third world'" (150). Starosta states that when he first worked in this context, he accepted the dominant beliefs of Western aid agencies and development scholars:

My taken-for-granteds—that the agency knows best, that innovations should be adopted by all villagers for the benefit of the nation, and that the public's task is to listen carefully and to enact, not to question and to initiate messages—corrupt much of what I wrote in my early years. I also worked within the construct of the third world, a place that must be penetrated and uplifted with messages of change so as to bring it "up" to a place alongside more primary worlds. I may have acquired my errant perspectives from the literature of political scientists and sociologists. (150)

Starotsa's wry confession regarding his former views also gives some background to and explanation for the vehemence of his 1984 article, where he engaged in a sustained critique of intercultural rhetoric. In the earlier article, Starosta defines "'rhetorical' intercultural discourse" as "that interaction that initially places cultural interactants into set sender and receive roles as a result of programmatic expectation, colonial relationship, or an active notion of cultural hierarchy" (308). While nowadays that might appear to be an odd notion of rhetoric—putting the involved parties in the old sender-receiver roles of Shannon and Weaver's mathematical communication theory—we can see that at the time Starosta was reacting to some of the dominant perspectives in development communication.

When Starosta asserts that intercultural rhetoric "breeds cultural disharmony" and alienates people from their "native settings" (311, emphasis in original), he is critiquing a fundamental concept of classical development communication theory. According to Melkote (2002),

Daniel Lerner's The Passing of Traditional Society (1958) illustrates the major ideas of the early mass media and modernization approach [to development]. Lerner identified and explained a psychological pattern in individuals that was both required and reinforced by the modern society: a mobile personality. This person was equipped with a high capacity for identification with new aspects of his or her environment and internalized the new demands made by the larger society. In other words, this person had a high degree of empathy, the capacity of see oneself in the other person's situation. Lerner stated that empathy fulfilled two important tasks. First, it enabled the person to operate efficiently in the modern society, which was constantly changing. Second, it was an indispensable skill for individuals wanting to move out of their traditional settings. (424)

Development, then, was not an interactive process in the sense that the "3rd world" people were thought to have anything to contribute. Starosta's criticism about intercultural rhetoric in the development context is that the rhetor—by definition an "outsider"—approaches the audience with a deficit model of that audience's society. What the audience possesses is at best irrelevant to the purposes of development and at worst an obstacle. Persuasion consists of stripping away those aspects of the audience's society that get in the way, and in creating in the audience (according to Lerner) a desire to leave the traditional society by attempting to get that audience to identify (have "empathy" for) with people in other situations.

Works Cited
Melkote, Srinivas R. "Theories of Development Communication." Handbook of International and Intercultural Communication. Ed. William B. Gudykunst and Bella Mody. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002. 419-36.

Starosta, William J. "On Intercultural Rhetoric." Methods for Intercultural Communication Research. Ed. William B. Gudykunst and Young Yun Kim. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1984. 229-238. Rpt. in Intercultural Communication: A Global Reader. Ed. Fred E. Jandt. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2004. 307-314.

Starosta, William J. "On the Intersection of Rhetoric and Intercultural Communication: A 25-Year Personal Retrospective" Rhetoric in Intercultural Contexts. Ed. Alberto Gonzalez and Dolores V. Tanno. International and Intercultural Communication Annual 22. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1999.

[development communication] [intercultural rhetoric] [William J. Starosta]

Actor-Network Theory and Activity Theory

2006-01-23T02:01:00.000+08:00

After reading Collin Brooke's post on Bruno Latour's Reassembling the Social, I ordered a copy of the book for Tunghai's library. With luck, it'll be on the shelf before the summer. (No, I'm not kidding, unfortunately.)

In the meantime (or is it "mean time"?), I did manage to find a multicolored version of the introduction that gives me some idea of what Latour is writing about.

Also, after reading Collin's review of the book, I wonder what connections there might be between Actor-Network Theory (which I know nothing about) and Activity Theory (which I know next to nothing about)--or whether or not they would be compatible. I see Latour's name cited in some works that take a sociocultural approach to writing (Prior's Writing / Disciplinarity, for instance), but Latour's work doesn't seem to be considered part of Activity Theory as, say, Yrj? Engestr?m's does.

Anyway, I feel I should learn a little more about this at some point, but I don't want it to move me too far away from my dissertation work...

(Ignore the "continue" link.)

[Activity Theory] [Actor-Network Theory]

Different things shooting off in my brain...

2006-01-19T01:20:00.000+08:00

I read an article today titled "Rethinking Genre in School and Society: An Activity Theory Analysis" by David R. Russell (Written Communication 14.4 (1997): 504-554). It was full of things that made me think about how I should treat genre in my diss.

He defines genres as "ways of recognizing and predicting how certain tools (including vocalizations and inscriptions), in certain typified--typical, reoccurring--conditions, may be used to help participants act together purposefully" (513).

He notes that it is important (especially for scholars of writing) to remember that genre doesn't have to refer to only language. Genre "may apply to the typified use of material tools of many types by an activity system, often in conjunction with one another" (513). This, and something he writes later about power and discourse, reminded me of something I had read in Sun Kang-i's book 走出白色恐怖 (Farewell to the White Terror).

Russell writes that from the point of view that he is developing,

power (social control, domination, hegemony, exclusion, etc.) is not some force that is mysteriously transported or conspiratorially hidden in discourse. Power is analyzable in terms of dialectical contradictions in activity systems, manifest in specific tools-in-use (including within genres) that people marshal when they are at cross-purposes. Nor are genres, in this view, Foucauldian capillaries, micro-level conduits carrying power (Foucault, 1981). Rather, genres come historically to fully mediate human interactions in such a way that some people (and some tools) have greater and lesser influence than others because of their dynamic position(s) in tool-mediated systems or networks. ... To understand power in modern social practices, one must follow the genres, written and otherwise. Power appears in specific, locatable occasions of mediated action and is created in the network of many localized instances. It is not an inchoate climate of force or terror, although such atmospheres and responses are (re-)created by the operationalizing of specific actions in mediated activity systems. (523-4)

In 走出白色恐怖, Sun Kang-i writes about how after her father was released from prison, police started coming to their house in the middle of the night, every 2 or 3 days, supposedly to check their household registration. The police would purposely make a lot of noise in order to let neighbors know that they were there, and the neighbors became more and more reluctant to have any dealings with Sun's family (72-3). This "checking of household registration" (查戶口), including the loud knocking on the door and the loud voices of the police, could be described as a genre of terror, including typified, localized actions by specific people with the purposes of disturbing Sun's family and affecting their neighbors' attitudes toward and interactions with her family.

There's also a sense, though, in which depicting this "terror genre" at such a local level makes it easy to ignore the activity systems of the KMT police state to which those local actors were connected. So one thing that Sun says that I am not sure I accept is that officials who are higher up are usually more compassionate and humane, but the lower officials are more uncooperative and even use their power to bully others (狐假虎威). She also felt that a lot of the other harassment that her family suffered was probably more due to the lower-level officials than the higher-ups--the latter probably didn't even know what was going on. I'm of the opinion that higher-up officials created the conditions for lower-level abuses.

So I think that while I'll mostly agree with Russell's depiction of how power and genre are related--in the sense that power is not "present" in genre-as-text, but rather is (re)produced through specific typified activities which are mediated by tools (including texts)--I also think it's important to map as completely as possible the various interlocking networks that are connected to those specific localized instantiations of power.

[dissertating] [genre] [power] [White Terror]

McDissertating

2006-01-17T02:30:00.000+08:00

As I mentioned earlier, I've been taking archival documents to McDonald's recently. They seem to like it there (and they don't eat much, which is a good thing).

Monday night, though, I spent some time reading through Casey Blanton's Travel Writing: The Self and the World to get some sense of how folks in literary studies write about travel writing. This book is also part of Routledge's "Genres in Context" series, which sounded good to me because I've been working recently on genre as it pertains to the archives I'm using.

The book gives a broad historical overview of different trends in travel writing related to the notion of "self" and "other". Blanton argues that "travel literature's longevity" might be well explained by "its narrative power, both literal and symbolic." Blanton continues,

The travel narrative is a compelling and seductive form of storytelling. Its reader is swept along on the surface of the text by the pure forward motion of the journey while being initiated into strange and often dangerous new territory. ... Yet, these works resonate with a symbolic and psychological truth that goes beyond their compelling narrative surfaces. The transformation from a literal journey to a psychological or symbolic one may occur for a number of reasons. The shift works on an intuitive level because of what Joseph Campbell calls the existence of the "monomyth," where the hero is seen as one who travels along a path of self-improvement and integration, doing battle with the "others" who are the unresolved parts of himself or herself. Wholeness is associated with homecoming when the quest cycle is complete. ... Whether fiction or nonfiction, there exists in the journey pattern the possibility of a kind of narrative where inner and outer worlds collide. But, as a survey of the development of the genre will show, the balance of that dialogue between the mind of the traveler and the observable world had not remained constant. As the purpose of travel has shifted from political exploration or mercantile errands to travel for its own sake, gradual but fundamental changes have occurred in the narratives that describe these trips. Those changes occur at the nexus of the traveler's concern with inner and outer worlds. (2-3)

I find this analysis interesting because as it tries to explain the general appeal of travel writing, it also points out how historical changes in the purposes and meanings of travel might have affected what travel writers emphasized in their texts.

But it's not yet going far enough for me. I'm more interested in how the travel narratives functioned as specific "events" and as part of particular situated activities. Blanton alludes to this when she writes,

At one end of the spectrum lie the object-bound journey accounts of sailors, pilgrims, and merchants whose trips were inspired by necessity or well-defined purpose: exploration, devotion, or economics. These journey narratives of early travelers usually appear as ships' logs or, more commonly, as in the case of Christopher Columbus, letters to king, sponsor, or loved ones at home. (3)

This is closer to what I'm dealing with in the rep letters (and the other writings of the OSMA reps). Unfortunately, I'm going to have to look elsewhere for analyses that do more than allude to the specific, situated work that travel writing participates in. I think part of the problem is that (as I knew already) literary studies has a different understanding of genre than does rhetorical studies. But I don't think my time with this book was completely wasted--I think Blanton's text does provide me with some idea of how travel writing is typically talked about in literary studies.

[dissertating] [genre] [OSMA] [travel writing]

A hopeful ending to 2005 and a hopeful start to 2006

2006-01-02T00:19:00.000+08:00

Dec. 31: I went to dinner with a few alumni from the class of 2000. I have a particularly close relationship to that group for various reasons. Anyway, one of them is working on his MA thesis and is having some trouble working on it because he's balancing it with a job (sounds familiar). So we decided that we're going to e-mail each other once a week to ~~nag~~ encourage each other. I think that will be a good thing!

Jan. 1: On the way back from my in-laws' home, we stopped at McDonald's and had some coffee. I brought my journal along (as I always do now) and spent about an hour writing in it. Continued working on some methodological issues related to my diss. and worked out some "possible possibilities" for dealing with those issues. Am feeling good about writing this thing again.

(Ignore the "continue" link.)

[dissertating]

Some progress

2005-12-31T01:31:00.000+08:00

No, I haven't sent in any more chapters (yet). But I think I'm finally going somewhere with actually putting pen to paper (literally) and fingers to keyboard with this thing. I finally realized something that I've been teaching writing students for years--you write in order to think as well as in order to record your thoughts. Duh!

(Ignore the "continue" link.)

[dissertating]

Lining up interviews

2005-11-09T03:32:00.000+08:00

Have had a few things to work on the past couple of weeks--we're having a writing symposium in Dec. that I'm helping to organize. In diss-related matters, we had the celebration of Tunghai's 50th anniversary last week and I got to meet some alumni and former teachers (including a 91 year-old American woman who flew over for the celebration!) and make connections with them. Hopefully I'll get to interview them (virtually) soon. I only was able to interview one person. They were kept pretty busy during the celebration--lots of activities, lots of speeches that they had to attend, etc.

So while I'm perpetually behind on this diss., I'm somewhat on track, anyway.

(Ignore the "continue" link.)

[dissertating]

Yameng Liu, "Justifying My Position in Your Terms"

2005-08-25T20:50:00.000+08:00

Liu, Yameng. "Justifying My Position in Your Terms: Cross-cultural Argumentation in a Globalized World." Argumentation 13 (1999): 297-315.

Liu, though he does not cite Starosta, takes the latter's ideas about the intercultural rhetor in quite a different direction. Liu argues that one issue that argumentation and communication scholars have not really faced is intercultural debate. The reason for this failure is the dominant notion of incommensurability between cultures that discourages people from thinking of intercultural disputation in any way that involves "shared interests and reasons" (300). Quoting Beer and Hariman, Liu notes that

As a result, within the dominant framework of international relations, the "complexities of political life are reduced to a calculus of power, justice is reduced to self-interest, appearances are reduced to the reality they conceal, and, ultimately, language is reduced to the world it would represent" (Beer and Hariman, 1996, p. 390). (Liu 299)

An example that both confirms the above and pushes against the inevitability of viewing international relations in this framework involves the use of Western terms of discourse, by non-Western political figures like Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, to debate values with the West. Liu notes that the use of Western discourse styles (dealing with issues like definition and contextualization of the terms of the debate) ends up being rejected--even dismissed--by some in the West (particularly the Western media) as a way for the non-Western leader to avoid changing his authoritarian ways. On the one hand, this confirms the idea that to the West, "appearances are reduced to the reality they conceal"; on the other, it suggests that it is not impossible for non-Westerners to use Western discourse to attempt to engage the West in discussion about fundamental values.

Liu also observes that some in the West have been trying to discuss with non-Western leaders topics such as democracy and human rights by resorting to the non-Westerners' own discursive frameworks. Liu quotes Daniel A. Bell, "a political philosopher with extensive teaching experiences in Singapore and Hong Kong," who argues that "if the 'ultimate aim of human rights diplomacy' is 'to persuade others of the value' of the rights, it is more 'likely that the struggle ... can be won' only if 'it is fought in ways that build on, rather than challenge, local cultural traditions'" (qtd in Liu 307).

Liu continues:

Juxtapose these two symmetrically reversed approaches, and a peculiar mode of cross-cultural argumentation emerges. Rather than trying in vain to meet in a neutral "battleground" for a direct argumentative confrontation before a common audience, the two opposing parties in this paradigm would each venture into the other's "territory" and seek to win the "battle" by provoking a "civil war" behind the opponent's line. (309)

That is, each side would use the other side's internal conflicts regarding values to instigate debate among members of the other culture regarding the two sides' positions. Liu calls this mode of argumentation "cross-arguing" (309).

He admits that cross-arguing is not without problems: issues such as how "cross-arguers" should argue their points in another culture:

consistently applying the cross-arguer's domestic norms would amount to exercising a kind of rhetorical extraterritoriality that is bound to antagonize the targeted audience and doom the persuasive efforts, whereas to switch codes according to what terms are being invoked is to risk losing one's identity and appearing inconsistent or even unethical by the standard of one's own community. (310).

This is no small problem; neither is another problem that Liu mentions: what happens to a position if the audience does not accept it. Liu doubts the position would be rejected by the domestic audience even if the targeted audience doesn't accept it. The question then becomes, then what should be done? Liu concludes,

One possible way out of this predicament may be to focus on what defines cross-arguing as a unique mode of argumentation, namely, the symmetrical mutuality of its operation. This essential feature decides that cros-cultural argumentation, to be at all possible, should always be a "bi-active" practice, and a clear-cut division of labor between an active persuader ... and a reactive/passive persuadee ... that serves to well in structuring intra-cultural argumentation does not apply in its organization. ... Since in cross-arguing, each party "intrudes" into the other's terministic "territory" and defends its own against the other's "counter-intrusion" at the same time, both play the same double role as a protagonist/antagonist and should bear the same burden of justification. (311-12)

The "bi-active" nature of Liu's description can undercut the problems that Starosta sees in intercultural rhetoric, where an active intercultural rhetor imposes his/her views on a more-or-less passive "native" audience.

[cross-arguing] [intercultural communication] [rhetoric] [Yameng Liu]

Mary Garrett and Xiaosui Xiao's "The Rhetorical Situation Revisited"

2005-08-25T15:44:00.000+08:00

Garrett, Mary, and Xiaosui Xiao. "The Rhetorical Situation Revisited." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 23.2 (1993): 30-40.

This article works from Lloyd Bitzer's notion of "the rhetorical situation", taking the Chinese response to the West during the Opium Wars as an example of how "the discourse tradition is both a source and a limiting horizon for the rhetor and for the audience of the rhetorical situation" (38).

They continue,

Thus, a discourse tradition directly or indirectly participates in a rhetoric situation in at least three ways: it generates needs and promotes interests in an audience that must to be met by new discourses [huh?]; it cultivates an audience's expectations about the appropriate forms of discourses, the proper subject matter, the right modes of argumentation, and so forth in relation to a given circumstance; and it also affects an audience's recognition and interpretation of a rhetorical exigency. (38-9)

[Although this article is also not about rhetorical pedagogy, per se, it is about how a rhetorical situation can be perceived differently by an audience depending on the audience's discourse traditions. This might have an effect on how students receive a teacher's teaching, for instance. Hmmmm….]

[Mary Garrett] [intercultural communication] [rhetoric] [rhetorical situation] [Xiaoxui Xiao]

William J. Starosta's "On Intercultural Rhetoric"

2005-08-25T15:03:00.000+08:00

Some of the next few posts will be based on summaries I'm doing for my lit. review part.

I'm having a little trouble with the following article for several reasons, one being that I can't figure out if it has been cited much. According to Google Scholar it hasn't. I wonder if that means it hasn't been considered "important" to the field... If any of my reader(s) has heard of it, let me know!

Starosta, William J. "On Intercultural Rhetoric." Methods for Intercultural Communication Research. Ed. William B. Gudykunst and Young Yun Kim. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1984. 229-238. Rpt. in Intercultural Communication: A Global Reader. Ed. Fred E. Jandt. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2004. 307-314.

Starosta's essay is a theoretical look at the idea of intercultural rhetoric. By "rhetoric," Starosta seems to be referring to (he doesn't specifically define "rhetoric") attempts by someone(s) from one culture to persuade someone(s) from another culture. Actually, he does define "'rhetorical' intercultural discourse" as

that interaction that initially places cultural interactants into set sender and receive roles as a result of programmatic expectation, colonial relationship, or an active notion of cultural hierarchy. (308)

[That seems to me to be an odd/old notion of rhetoric--the old sender-receiver roles... It seems to put the "receiver" in a much more passive position than most contemporary views of audience would accept.]

Starosta calls intercultural rhetoric "extractionist" (by attempting to "'extract' the native" from his or her cultural perspective [310]) and exploitative (311). He argues that it

breeds cultural disharmony. When one psychologically, physically, or existentially removes a native from her or his cultural setting in order to modify the preference of that native, the result is the alienation of that person from the native setting. Successful inculcation of external ideas requires the disparagement of historically "correct" solutions. (311, emphasis in original)

[To be honest, I have to say at this point that he seems to have a pretty static view of culture, but I might be wrong about that... But I can think of some examples of how, for instance, some Chinese during the May Fourth era were psychologically and existentially (if not physically) removed from their cultural setting and alienated from their culture. Wen-Hsin Yeh's book about higher education in Republican China is even titled The Alienated Academy, which seems to support Starosta's view here.]

And now he gets to history:

Intercultural rhetoric stresses the here-and-now. Intercultural rhetoric broadens the range of abstractions at the command of the receiver. It telescopes centuries of tradition into a word such as "tribalism" or "paganism," and dismisses age-old practices with a glib dyslogism. Intercultural rhetoric, more than any intracultural force, champions frustrations and raises expectations. Soon the fruits of change, the promises of rhetoric become the expected reward for the "faithful" and the neoorthodox, and constraints to achievement of these rewards become viewed as part of a conspiracy of "traditionalists." Present circumstance is too bitter a reality to taste, and too disappointing to accept. It must be viewed as "becoming," if not yet "arrived," with apology being offered for the persistence of present form and circumstance. (312, emphasis in original)

[Now what the heck does this last sentence mean?]

Starosta admits that his

reasoning carries [him] from a view of culture that is fairly stable and immune to outside influence, through a stage where a few persons listen to outside voices, through a further stage where these individuals constitute a channel to reach others, to an end stage where change is routine, and mechanical voices call the tune. The irony of this process is that, by definition, the "answers" from the outside forces cannot be truly suited to needs. (313)

So his view of culture here is as something that is stable. Earlier he suggests that cultures "are self-promoting" "because they succeed in allowing their adherents to survive in a difficult world" (307).

Perhaps instead of calling this essay theoretical, I should call it a manifesto of sorts. Starosta notes toward the end that some of the things he says "are offered without apparent substantiation" (313), which I agree appears to be the case. It's hard to get a clear sense of what specific examples he might have in mind. On the other hand, there is some extent to which I can see how his depiction of "intercultural" rhetors almost forcing their views on "natives" might apply to the situation in China. However, I can't but think that what actually happened is more complicated than the process he describes, mainly because I don't see the "natives"--the audience of the intercultural rhetor--as being as passive as he seems to think.

[intercultural communication] [rhetoric] [William J. Starosta]

The location of Chinese culture

2005-05-31T19:55:00.000+08:00

Got a draft done of my paper for the conference of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric--the conference is in July, but to get a travel grant, I needed to finish a decent draft before the end of May. But my draft sucks... *Sigh*

I made some use of the Liang Rongruo stuff I posted here, as well as some writings by Zhang Qiyun (former Education Minister and founder of Chinese Culture University). My paper is trying to put some pressure on the "Chinese" part of "Chinese rhetoric." A lot of writing about Chinese rhetoric (and particularly, for my purposes, contemporary Chinese rhetoric) seems to assume that the "Chinese" part is relatively unproblematic. I tried to take one historical period (the approximately 20 years between the time the KMT took over Taiwan and the mid 1960s) and look at what kind of Chineseness the Nationalist government was promoting, in opposition to what, and to what ends. And then relate it to rhetoric and the teaching of writing and speaking. It's a bit of a tall order for a 20-minute conference presentation, but maybe it'll go over OK. (That's assuming, of course, I even get the grant.) At any rate, it did spur some thinking and writing that will help me in getting this *$*!$&!%0 dissertation written...

The title of my paper is "The Location of Chinese Culture: The Rhetoric of Chineseness in Post-World War Two Taiwan." (Originally I included colonial Taiwan, but found it was much too much to cover in a short presentation...)

A little about Liang Rongruo

2005-05-16T23:08:00.000+08:00

This information about Liang comes from the dissertation I mentioned below by Su-San Lee.

Liang was born in Beijing in 1904 and went to the Imperial University of Tokyo for graduate school. According to Lee, "he stayed in the Japanese-occupied Beijing for seven years, ostensibly as a lecturer in two normal schools whereas [sic] secretly serving as a secretary to the underground KMT" (401).

He became a professor at Tunghai at the invitation of Xu Fuguan in 1957--at that time, Liang "was a famous essayist, the vice president of the National Language Daily, and a full-time professor at the Normal College" (402). "However," continues Lee, "conflicts began after Xu recommended Liang for the chairmanship of the Chinese department at Tunghai in 1961" (402).

Lee describes a power struggle between Xu and Liang that took several forms--anonymous letters attacking various colleagues, secret taping of confidential conversations between Liang and Xu, and accusations back and forth between Xu and Liang. People in literary circles quickly moved to either Xu's side or Liang's:

Pro-Xu and pro-Liang people formed two conflicting camps: Xu had the editors of Chinese Magazine, Yangming Magazine, Cultural Banner Magazine (Wenhuaqi) and the Poets Association as his supporters. To them Liang's scholarship as revealed in his prize winning book Biographies of Ten Writers (Wenxue shijia zhuang) was problematic; but his China-bashing remarks in "Japanese Culture and Chinese Culture" [an essay written during the Sino-Japanese War] were even more inexcusable. Yet Liang was backed by politically more powerful men of letters, including the former General Secretary of the KMT and Minister of Education Zhang Qiyun, many of whom believed that the patriotism that Liang later disclosed was strong enough to vindicate his earlier mistake. (403)

The conflicts between Xu and Liang simmered, then flared up again in 1968. Finally, in 1969, the Tunghai administration forced Liang to retire and Xu to leave, too (408).

Source: Lee, Su-San. Xu Fuguan and New Confucianism in Taiwan (1949-1969): A Cultural History of the Exile Generation. Doctoral dissertation, Brown University, 1998.

Liang Rongruo on youth language training

2005-05-16T11:39:00.000+08:00

(If I seem to be writing a lot about Liang Rongruo, it's because the book is due today...)

Note: language training in the essay I discuss below seems to refer specifically to speech training, as in public speaking.

In his article "The Language Training of Youth" (青年語言訓練), written in 1953 and first published as an appendix to a vocational high school Guowen textbook, Liang argues for the importance of the spoken word in democratic society. He contrasts the times of absolute monarchy, when scholar-bureaucrats presented their views about national policy via writing, with democracies, where speaking--and particularly eloquence (雄辯)--becomes important for anyone in leadership positions. (It's interesting that he focuses on people in leadership positions.) Moreover, he says, since writing has become much more like speaking (文字口語化), language practice can both train speaking and provide a basis for writing practice (25).

Liang follows with a brief paragraph surveying the rhetorical nature of the history of Chinese thought, from the Shu Jing to Confucius, to Mengzi, Zhuangzi, Mozi, etc., until the Qin and Han dynasties, when authoritarianism reduced the freedom of speech and debate. After that point, Liang says, there was less emphasis on language training, although he does note such rhetorical displays as the qing tan (清談) of the Wei and Jin dynasties. But he calls the content of these mostly hollow and mysterious (空洞虛玄), and far from the spirit of the debates of the Warring States period (25-6).

His second section, on conviction and the content of speaking, is a brief exposition of something quite similar to the Western concept of ethos. Liang points out the importance of not speaking only to promote oneself and of speaking what one believes. He gives examples of Mozi, Lu Zhonglian, and Abraham Lincoln, whose speeches/speech acts were done at the risk of their lives. He also emphasizes the importance of avoiding speaking about what one does not know, of avoiding talking for the sake of self-promotion and for the sake of talking. These kinds of speaking are not useful and waste time, he says (26-7).

The third section, on choosing and polishing one's words, covers the importance of spending time choosing the right words to express one's ideas in a way that is appropriate to the audience. Again, he emphasizes keeping one's speech brief, reminding readers that one is bound to say something wrong if one says too much (言多必失) and that many words lead to many failures (多言多敗). Liang suggests four things to avoid when one is polishing the diction of one's speech:

1) Avoid local dialects and colloquialisms. (He gives no explanation as to why.)
2) Be careful when using chengyu or classical language, to avoid making mistakes such as using the proverb incorrectly or sounding unnatural.
3) Avoid using unassimilated foreign words or undigested bits of technical jargon or stock phrases.
4) Avoid overlong and complicated descriptive sentences full of abstractions.

Many people, he says, throw foreign words or literary language into their speeches to show off their learning and cultivation, but this makes their speeches much less effective. Long sentences harm the natural rhythm, are hard to say, and sound strained. If one chooses one's words carefully and polishes one's language, one can get ideas across simply and more effectively (27-8).

The above reminds me of George Campbell's pronouncements on usage in his Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776). Campbell is famous for characterizing proper usage as "reputable, national, and present." As Bizzell and Herzberg summarize,

By reputable, he means the generally accepted customary usage of educated people and particularly of well-regarded writers. National means usage and pronunciation that are most widely understood through a country--again, usually that of the educated classes. And present refers both to "not absent" (that is, foreign or faddish) and to "not obsolete." ... (748)

I don't know if Liang had read Campbell's book at any point, or had come in contact with Campbell's thought in his studies, but perhaps that's not so important. The similarities might also come from the fact that both writers were working out of a context in which (for different reasons) usage was one of the ways in which particular groups of people were given a higher status than others. In eighteenth-century Britain, language was used to distinguish the higher classes from the middle classes and the speakers of an upper-class London variety from the "provincial" speakers of Scottish or Irish English. In 1950s Taiwan, "local dialects" referred to varieties such as Minnan and Hakka, which were seen as inferior to the national language (which is what "Guoyu" literally means). On the other hand, an important difference between Britain and Taiwan was that in Taiwan, even many of the mainlanders were speakers of "local dialects" (local mainland dialects, that is). As I mentioned below, even teachers of Guowen were not free of influence from their native language varieties.

The fourth section of the article is on the quality of the voice in public speaking. Liang suggests that although some aspects of the voice are inborn, they can to some extent be developed and improved through practice and training. The first point Liang emphasizes is standard pronunciation. He also deals extensively with the proper use of pitch in different situations (asking questions, emphasizing words, expressing disappointment or surprise, etc.). Finally, he addresses pacing and breathing.

Section five deals with gestures and facial expressions.

The final section discusses how to deal with the unexpected (such as hecklers) and how to conclude in a memorable way.

One of the things I find interesting about this article is the fact that it was originally published as an appendix to a vocational school Guowen textbook. I need to find out if other high schools also had similar discussions of public speaking as part of their textbooks. Also, I wonder how long this article remained in the textbook (in how many editions), and whether or how often it was actually used or reflected a real concern by language teachers with public speaking. (Or did students merely read about public speaking without ever doing it?)

A little more about vocational high schools: students who went to vocational high schools were usually not university-bound. If anything, they would go on to a two-year junior college (a sort of "vocational college") to get something like an associate's degree. Most vocational high graduates did not even go on for a junior college education. One thing that might be interesting to find out is the percentages of mainlanders vs. Taiwanese/Hakka/Aboriginal students who went to vocational high schools around the time of Liang's article. It might shed some light, for instance, on some of the ideas in the third section of the article.

Works Cited
Bizzell, Patricia, and Bruce Herzberg. "George Campbell." [Introduction to excerpts from Campbell's Philosohy of Rhetoric.] The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Campbell. Boston: Bedford, 1990. 746-49.

Liang, Rongruo 梁容若. "Qingnian de Yuyan Shunlian" 青年語言訓練. Appendix to Gaozhi Guowen Di'er Ce 高職國文第二冊, 1953. Rpt. in Guoyu yu Guowen 國語與國文. 2nd ed. Taipei: Guoyu Ribao She, 1969. 25-32.

[Updated 5/17/05, 2:25 a.m.; 5/20/05, 3:30 p.m.]

Liang Rongruo on the content of Guowen class

2005-05-13T01:50:00.000+08:00

Liang Rongruo (in the same essay cited below) has the following to say about what students should read about in secondary-level Guowen class:

… 有些古代的文學作品，從文學史學術學的觀點上看，也許是很重要很有價值的，但是從現代的教育目標上看，或不合於民族主義，或不合於民權主義，或根本違反民生主義，或與現代的科學知識不免牴觸，就失掉其為精讀教材的價值。譬如我們要建立職業平等，生產建設的社會，那麼凡以高官厚爵沾沾自喜，自居為特殊份子的作品是不足取的。我們要提倡國內各民族一律平等，凡是偏激狹隘，輕視邊疆民族的作品，也是應當斟酌的。此外如迷信傳說，怪異掌故，妄誕的怪力亂神記事，陰陽五行思想，大部與現代科學精神根本不相容。但是在舊文學作品裡，常常充滿這種氣氛。(15-16)

Here, Liang argues that while some ancient works of literature are perhaps worth studying from the perspectives of literature, history, or art, they are not necessarily worthy of studying from the point of view of modern educational goals. He goes on to name some of the "guilty parties," such as the Song dynasty's Gao Xi (高錫), whose essay 勸農論 advised against helping farmers increase their production, and the Tang writer Bai Juyi (白居易), who wrote an essay against killing locusts. Liang concludes that when choosing course materials for Guowen, one must make sure to avoid these kinds of historical poison (歷史的毒素).

It's notable (though not surprising) that Liang identifies educational goals (教育目標) and Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People--the principles of nationalism (民族主義), democracy (民權主義), and the people's livelihood (民生主義). He also writes that literary works that conflict with modern scientific knowledge should also not be considered worthy of intensive study. (So works that discussed superstitious legends, gods, or the ideas of Yin/Yang and the Five Elements would best be avoided. But, as he admits, ancient writings are full of that kind of mythological atmosphere.)

Liang also discusses the issue of what students should write about in their Guowen classes. He suggests having students write about subjects that they study in other classes and emphasizes that writing for secondary students should be primarily focused on training students to record their thinking; training in literary composition is of less importance (中學生的作文應當以訓練記述思考能力為主，純文藝的寫作訓練是次要的…). One reason for this, he notes, is that few students will have an interest in or talent for literary composition; most students need only learn to write "practical" or "applied" compositions (應用文字) that are clear and accurate. He suggests that teaching such kinds of writing is an easy task on which it is almost unworthy to place too much emphasis (16).

Source: Liang Rongruo 梁容若. "Ruhe Gaijin Zhongxue de Guowen Jiaoxue" 如何改進中學的國文教學. Zhongdeng Jiaoyu 中等教育 6.2 (1955). Rpt. in Guoyu yu Guowen 國語與國文. 2nd ed. Taipei: Guoyu Ribao She, 1969. 13-18.

[updated 5/14/05, 12:14 a.m.]

Guowen teacher qualifications: another aspect of Taiwan's post-war literacy crisis

2005-05-12T23:41:00.000+08:00

Much of the "blame" for Taiwanese students' problems learning Guoyu was often placed on the fifty years that Taiwanese were separated from the "fatherland" or on the influence of Japanese. From a different angle, the teachers themselves were part of the problem.

Liang Rongruo (梁容若), a scholar involved with the Guoyu Ribao and a Chinese dept. professor at Tunghai from 1957 until 1969, wrote in 1955 about the problem regarding the training of secondary school Guowen teachers. He pointed out that many secondary school Guowen teachers were not trained in Chinese, but rather had studied subjects like political science, history, economics, and law. So Guowen classes ended up discussing those topics rather than what students were supposed to be learning, such as training in Guoyu, grammar, style, and the "dissection" of essays--things that the teachers themselves had never studied (13).

In addition, teachers in the primary and secondary schools came from all over China and often brought with them the dialects of their home provinces. Not only was their Guoyu sometimes hard to understand, a student might even experience having his or her "standard" Guoyu pronunciation "corrected" according to the teacher's "nonstandard" accent, says Liang (13).

Liang regarded the teaching of Guowen as a profession that required professional knowledge, just as teachers of chemistry or physics needed training in those subjects (14).

Source: Liang Rongruo 梁容若. "Ruhe Gaijin Zhongxue de Guowen Jiaoxue" 如何改進中學的國文教學. Zhongdeng Jiaoyu 中等教育 6.2 (1955). Rpt. in Guoyu yu Guowen 國語與國文. 2nd ed. Taipei: Guoyu Ribao She, 1969. 13-18.

Recent rereadings

2005-04-07T02:02:00.000+08:00

I've been rereading Robin Varnum's Fencing with Words recently, thinking about how she weaves together her finds in the Amherst College archives, her interviews with seven former Amherst English teachers, and her other primary and secondary sources. I'm also reading to see how she places herself in the study, and how she places the study in the discipline--two things I need to work on myself with my own study.

I'm working on getting some more interviews--at this point a lot of my interviews seem to be via mail or e-mail. I've done a few face-to-face interviews and one phone interview. I was surprised to see that Varnum only interviewed ~~seven~~ fourteen people--she got a lot out of them, it seems.

Another book-length work I've gone back to is Su-San Lee's 1998 dissertation, Xu Fuguan and New Confucianism in Taiwan (1949-1969): A Cultural History of the Exile Generation. Xu Fuguan was a professor in the Chinese Dept. at Tunghai from 1955-1969 and a well-known Confucian scholar. Chapter 8 of Lee's dissertation, "Mainlanders, Taiwanese and Americans in Taichung" traces some of the intercultural conflicts that occurred at Tunghai between Xu, a "New Confucianist" and defender of Chinese tradition and values, and the Americans and Christians at Tunghai. She describes the early years at Tunghai from a Chinese perspective, which helps to balance the American perspective I've been reading and writing from.

One interesting quote from Xu came in reaction to a 1964 survey report on Tunghai conducted by the United Board. The survey writers argued that there were not enough Taiwanese instructors at Tunghai to balance the number of Mainlanders. Lee quotes/translates Xu as writing,

This report is full of hostility to the people coming from the Mainland. They announce publicly that the Mainland and Taiwan are two nations and cultures; the purpose of their founding a university here is to train the Taiwanese only. And what they call the purpose of this university is virtually trying to transform it into a divinity school. Every Chinese is insulted by this report. ... Life starts from one's nation and ends with it. ... the Japanese enlightened my national consciousness in the past, and now Tunghai [U]niversity gives me that lesson again. (qtd in Lee 400; from a letter to Xu's daughter)

Xu clearly feels oppressed, which is interesting given the usual view that the Mainlanders were the ones doing the oppressing (often with American help) in postwar Taiwan. Xu, as Lee points out, not only didn't see a difference between Taiwanese and Chinese, he also associated quite a bit with Taiwanese intellectuals in Taichung. He seems to have viewed the American/Christian perspective toward Taiwan and Tunghai as oppressive as the Japanese treatment of China and Taiwan before 1945.

Rhetoric at Tunghai--the early years

2005-03-10T00:12:00.000+08:00

Among the interesting (and challenging) things about studying what I'm (still) calling "rhetorical education" at Tunghai University during the 1950s-to-whenever are the following:

1. At least at its beginning, Tunghai had a reputation of being an almost bilingual school. Not only were students learning English in their required and elective English classes, many of them also had to take courses in subjects like physics and chemistry where the instructors were teaching in English.

2. Although there was a strong emphasis on language education (both in Chinese and English), there wasn't, to my knowledge, any explicit recognition of language education as rhetorical education (the word "rhetoric" hardly shows up in any of the archival documents I've seen, and as I've mentioned before, gets a bad rap in one of the important documents that lays out the school's philosophy of general education). And (as I also mentioned) this same document seems to equate the teaching of language with training to use a tool--language courses exist for the sake of other areas of study.

This kind of perspective is also found in other writings by other Tunghai people, such as Anne ("Nancy") Cochran, first chair of the Foreign Language department. In her book Modern Methods of Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Cochran argued that in East Asia, most students study English in order to learn about and translate Western scientific discoveries and technical information. She placed expression pretty low on the scale of what such students wanted or needed from their language training. She made a distinction between students who wanted to learn English in order to become part of an English-speaking society and those who wanted to learn enough to be able to share Western knowledge with their compatriots:

A good many students ... are not interested in producing English themselves, either in the spoken or written forms. But even such students realize that in technical fields a reading knowledge of English is very useful and sometimes almost a necessity. ... A few scholars also might conceivably wish to be able not only to read English but also to write it so as to be able to communicate with Western scholars. ... Still others wish only to translate. This emphasis has become very strong in the Far East, and may also be growing in other countries. ... (3)

This belief, to some degree, influenced Cochran's work with the teaching of English to non-English majors at Tunghai. While students were given opportunities to express themselves, Cochran also appeared to emphasize correctness of pronunciation and grammar over (but not to the exclusion of) training in the production of more extended discourse.

3. On the other hand, expressive speaking and writing were practiced extracurricularly in the form of student-written publications and student participation in speech contests. (In fact, students often did quite well in national-level English speech contests. One of Tunghai's alumni, Tu Weiming, came in first in a national contest sponsored by the Rotary Club of the R.O.C.) Tunghai Wind (東海風), a magazine to which students and faculty contributed articles in both English and Chinese, enjoyed a long publication history (but was, from some accounts, cancelled by Tunghai president Mei Kewang in the late 1970s or early 80s). The Foreign Language department also produced an English newspaper for a long time (under the direction of Louise Crawford, a teacher who originally came to Taiwan under the Syracuse-in-Asia program). Both English majors and non-English majors contributed to the English newspaper (the aforementioned Tu was a Chinese major, for instance, and wrote at least one article about the proposed honor system). Chinese and English discussion and debate--within limits--were quite present on Tunghai's campus. (It just wasn't called "rhetoric," evidently.)

Work Cited

Cochran, Anne. Modern Methods of Teaching English as a Foreign Language: A Guide to Modern Materials with Particular Reference to the Far East. 1952. 2nd ed. Washington, D.C.: Educational Services, 1958.

[Updated 03/10/05, 1:46 p.m.]

Winter break work

2005-02-28T23:44:00.000+08:00

Besides making a somewhat ugly title graphic (like me, my computer is a little colorblind), I spent part of winter vacation searching the online archive for articles about Taiwan and revising a conference paper that is tangentially connnected to my dissertation project. The sources that I downloaded via Syracuse University's library (their database of full-text journals is one reason I have little motivation to finish the dissertation) include articles from the China Quarterly, Asian Survey, and Far Eastern Survey going back to 1942 (and I could have gone earlier). It's a nice collection that has already helped me quite a bit.

Here's a bibliography of some of the sources (with a rough attempt at categorization and a few other sources added in):

Arts:

Chen, Lucy H. “Literary Formosa.” The China Quarterly 15 (Jul.-Sep. 1963): 75-85.

Davis, D. W. “A New Taiwan Person? A Conversation with Wu Nien-chen.” Positions: East-West Cultures Critique 11.3 (2003): 717-34.

Wang, Georgette. “Popular Music in Taiwan.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication (1986): 366-68.

Yue, Ming-Bao. “’There is No Place like Home’: Diasporic Identifications and Taiwan Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s.” Postcolonial Studies 6.2 (2003): 207-221.

Education:

Martin, Roberta. “The Socialization of Children in China and on Taiwan: An Analysis of Elementary School Textbooks.” The China Quarterly 62 (June 1975): 242-62.

McBeath, Gerald A. “Youth Change in Taiwan, 1975-1985.” Asian Survey 26.9 (1986): 1020-36.

Meyer, Jeffrey E. “Teaching Morality in Taiwan Schools: The Message of the Textbooks.” The China Quarterly 114 (June 1988): 267-84.

Wilson, Richard W. “A Comparison of Political Attitudes of Taiwanese Children and Mainlander Children on Taiwan.” Asian Survey 8.12 (1968): 988-1000.

Wright, Teresa. “Student Mobilization in Taiwan: Civil Society and Its Discontents.” Asian Survey 39.6 (1999): 986-1008.

Ethnic Relations:

Appleton, Sheldon. “Taiwanese and Mainlanders on Taiwan: A Survey of Student Attitudes.” The China Quarterly 44 (Oct.-Dec. 1970): 38-65.

Cheng, Peter P. C. “The Formosan Tangle: A Formosan’s View.” Asian Survey 7.11 (1967): 791-806.

Meisner, Maurice. “The Development of Formosan Nationalism.” The China Quarterly 15 (Jul.-Sep. 1963): 91-106.

International Relations:

Lewis, John Wilson. “Quemoy and American China Policy.” Asian Survey 2.1 (1962): 12-19.

Maykovich, Minako K. “Taiwanese Images of Americans and Their Government.” Asian Survey 22.4 (1982): 385-98.

Steiner, H. Arthur. “The United States and the Two Chinas.” Far Eastern Survey 22.6 (May 1953): 57-61.

Japanese Period:

Chen, Edward I-te. “Formosan Political Movements Under Japanese Colonial Rule, 1914-1937.” The Journal of Asian Studies 31.3 (1972): 477-97.

Grajdanzev, A. J. “Formosa (Taiwan) Under Japanese Rule.” Pacific Affairs 15.3 (1942): 311-24.

Wickberg, Edgar. “The Taiwan Peasant Movement, 1923-1932: Chinese Rural Radicalism Under Japanese Development Programs.” Pacific Affairs 48.4 (1975-76): 558-82.

Martial Law:

Bennett, Gordon. Rev. of The Politics of Formosan Nationalism by Douglas Mendel. The China Quarterly 43 (Jul.-Sep. 1970): 142-44.

Chai, Trong R. “The Future of Taiwan.” Asian Survey 26.12 (1986): 1309-23.

Chang, Maria Hsia. “Political Succession in the Republic of China on Taiwan.” Asian Survey 24.4 (1984): 423-46.

Conant, Melvin, Jr. “JCRR: An Object Lesson.” Far Eastern Survey 2 May 1951: 88-92. (Mentions Taiwan, but mostly about mainland)

Converse, Elizabeth. “Formosa: Private Citadel?” Far Eastern Survey 19 Oct. 1949: 249-50.

Dickson, Bruce J. “The Lessons of Defeat: The Reorganization of the Kuomintang on Taiwan, 1950-52.” The China Quarterly 133 (Mar. 1993): 56-84.

Domes, Jurgen. “The 13^th Party Congress of the Kuomintang: Towards Political Competition?” The China Quarterly 118 (Jun. 1989): 345-59.

Eastman, Lloyd E. “Who Lost China? Chiang Kai-shek Testifies.” The China Quarterly 88 (Dec. 1981): 658-68.

Engstrom, Richard L., and Chu Chi-hung. “The Impact of the 1980 Supplementary Election on Nationalist China’s Legislative Yuan.” Asian Survey 24.4 (1984): 447-58.

Glass, Sheppard. “Some Aspects of Formosa’s Economic Growth.” The China Quarterly 15 (Jul.-Sep. 1963): 12-34.

Gurtov, Melvin. “Recent Developments on Formosa.” The China Quarterly 31 (Jul.-Sep. 1967): 59-95.

Hood, Steven J. “Political Change in Taiwan: The Rise of Kuomintang Factions.” Asian Survey 36.5 (1996): 468-82.

Jacobs, J. Bruce. “Recent Leadership and Political Trends in Taiwan.” The China Quarterly 45 (Jan.-Mar. 1971): 129-54.

Jacobs, J. Bruce. “Taiwan’s Press: Communications Link and Research Resource.” The China Quarterly 68 (Dec. 1976): 778-88.

Kallgren, Joyce K. Rev. of Formosa Betrayed by George H. Kerr. The China Quarterly 29 (Jan.-Mar. 1967): 173-75.

Kau, Michael Ying-mao. “The Power Structure in Taiwan’s Political Economy.” Informal Politics in East Asia. Asian Survey 36.3 (1996): 287-305.

Kerr, George. “Formosa: Colonial Laboratory.” Far Eastern Survey 23 Feb. 1942: 50-55.

Kerr, George. “Formosa’s Return to China.” Far Eastern Survey 15 Oct. 1947: 205-8.

Kerr, George. “Some Chinese Problems in Taiwan.” Far Eastern Survey 10 Oct. 1945: 284-87.

Kerr, George. “Sovereignty of the Liuchiu Islands.” Far Eastern Survey 25 Apr. 1945: 96-100.

Kerr, George. “The March Massacres.” Far Eastern Survey 5 Nov. 1947: 224-26.

Lancashire, Edel. “Popeye and the Case of Guo Yidong, Alias Bo Yang.” The China Quarterly 92 (Dec. 1982): 663-86.

Lancashire, Edel. “The Lock of the Heart Controversy in Taiwan, 1962-63: A Question of Artistic Freedom and a Writer’s Social Responsibility.” The China Quarterly 103 (Sep. 1985): 462-88.

Liu, Henry Y. “Comment: Taiwan’s Press: Political Communications Link and Research Resource.” [Comment on Jacobs’s 1976 article by the same name] The China Quarterly 71 (Sep. 1977): 608.

Long, Simon. “Taiwan’s National Assembly Elections.” The China Quarterly 129 (Mar. 1992): 216-28.

McBeath, Gerald A. “Restructuring Government in Taiwan.” Asian Survey 40.2 (2000): 251-268.

Mei, Wen-Li. “The Intellectuals on Formosa.” The China Quarterly 15 (Jul.-Sep. 1963): 65-74.

Peng, Ming-min. “Political Offenses in Taiwan: Laws and Problems. The China Quarterly 47 (Jul.-Sep. 1971): 471-93.

Riggs, Fred W. “Chinese Administration in Formosa.” Far Eastern Survey 12 Dec. 1951: 209-15.

Riggs, Fred W. Rev. of Colonial Development and Population in Taiwan by George W. Barclay and A Report on Taiwan’s Population. Far Eastern Survey Aug. 1954: 128.

Tozer, Warren. “Taiwan’s ‘Cultural Renaissance’: A Preliminary View.” The China Quarterly 43 (Jul.-Sep. 1970): 81-99.

Uhalley, Stephen, Jr. “Taiwan’s Response to the Cultural Revolution.” Asian Survey 7.11 (1967): 824-29.

Walker, Gordon. Rev. of Formosa Under Chinese Nationalist Rule by Fred W. Riggs. Far Eastern Survey 17 Dec. 1952: 191-2.

Politics:

Brown, Deborah A., Eric P. Moon, and James A. Robinson. “Taiwan’s 1998 Local Elections: Appraising Steps in Democratization.” Asian Survey 38.6 (1998): 569-84.

Chao, Linda, and Ramon H. Myers. “The First Chinese Democracy: Political Development of the Republic of China on Taiwan, 1986-1994.” Asian Survey 34.3 (1994): 213-30.

Chou, Yangsun, and Andrew J. Nathan. “Democratizing Transition in Taiwan.” Asian Survey 27.3 (1987): 277-99.

Chu, Yun-han, and Larry Diamond. “Taiwan’s 1998 Elections: Implications for Democratic Consolidation.” Asian Survey 39.5 (1999): 808-22.

Copper, John F. “Taiwan’s Recent Election: Progress toward a Democratic System.” Asian Survey 21.10 (1981): 1029-39.

Domes, Jurgen. “Political Differentiation in Taiwan: Group Formation within the Ruling Party and the Opposition Circles 1979-1980.” Asian Survey 21.10 (1981): 1011-28.

Hao, Paul W. Rev. of Taiwan: National Identity and Democratization by Alan Wachman. Pacific Affairs 69.3 (1996): 411-12.

Israel, John. “Politics on Formosa.” The China Quarterly 14 (Jul-Sep. 1963): 3-11.

Lee, Lin-Lee. Political Discourse and Democratization: Campaign Rhetoric in the Taiwanese Presidential Election of 1996. Diss. U of Minnesota, 2000. Ann Arbor: UMI, 2000.

Leng, Shao-chuan, and Cheng-yi Lin. “Political Change on Taiwan: Transition to Democracy?” Special Issue: Greater China. The China Quarterly 136 (Dec. 1993): 805-39.

Myers, Ramon H. “Political Theory and Recent Political Developments in the Republic of China.” Asian Survey 27.9 (1987): 1003-1022.

Tan, Qingshan, Peter Kien-hong Yu, and Wen-chun Chen. “Local Politics in Taiwan: Democratic Consolidation.” Asian Survey 36.5 (1996): 483-94.

Thompson, Thomas N. “Taiwan’s Ambiguous Destiny.” Asian Survey 16.7 (1976): 611-19.

Tien, Hung-mao. “Taiwan in Transition: Prospects for Socio-Political Change.” The China Quarterly 64 (Dec. 1975): 615-44.

Tien, Hung-mai, and Tun-jen Cheng. “Crafting Democratic Institutions in Taiwan.” The China Journal 37 (1997): 1-27.

Ts’ai, Ling, and Ramon H. Myers. “Surviving the Rough-and-Tumble of Presidential Politics in an Emerging Democracy: The 1990 Elections in the Republic of China on Taiwan.” The China Quarterly 129 (Mar. 1992): 123-48.

Ts’ai, Ling, and Ramon H. Myers. “Winds of Democracy: The 1989 Taiwan Elections.” Asian Survey 30.4 (1990): 360-79.

Winckler, Edwin A. “Institutionalization and Participation on Taiwan: From Hard to Soft Authoritarianism?” The China Quarterly 99 (Sep. 1984): 481-99.

Wu, Yu-Shan. “Marketization of Politics: The Taiwan Experience.” Asian Survey 29.4 (1989): 382-400.

Yearly Reviews:

Appleton, Sheldon L. “Taiwan: The Year It Finally Happened.” A Survey of Asia in 1971: Part 1. Asian Survey 12.1 (1972): 32-37.

Cabestan, Jean-Pierre. “Taiwan in 1998: An Auspicious Year for the Kuomintang.” A Survey of Asia in 1998. Asian Survey 39.1 (1999): 140-147.

Cabestan, Jean-Pierre. “Taiwan in 1999: A Difficult Year for the Island and the Kuomintang.” A Survey of Asia in 1999. Asian Survey 40.1 (2000): 172-180.

Chang, Parris. “Taiwan in 1982: Diplomatic Setback Abroad and Demands for Reforms at Home.” A Survey of Asia in 1982: Part 1. Asian Survey 23.1 (1983): 38-46.

Chang, Parris. “Taiwan in 1983: Setting the Stage for Power Transition.” A Survey of Asia in 1983: Part 1. Asian Survey 24.1 (1984): 122-26.

Cheng, Peter P. “Taiwan 1975: A Year of Transition.” A Survey of Asia in 1975: Part 1. Asian Survey 16.1 (1976): 61-65.

Cheng, Tun-jen. “Taiwan in 1996: From Euphoria to Melodrama.” A Survey of Asia in 1996: Part 1. Asian Survey 37.1 (1997): 43-51.

Cheng, Tun-jen, and Yi-shing Liao. “Taiwan in 1997: An Embattled Government in Search of New Opportunities.” A Survey of Asia in 1997: Part 1. Asian Survey 38.1 (1998): 53-63.

Copper, John F. “Taiwan in 1980: Entering a New Decade.” A Survey of Asia in 1980: Part 1. Asian Survey 21.1 (1981): 51-62.

Copper, John F. “Taiwan in 1981: In a Holding Pattern.” A Survey of Asia in 1981: Part 1. Asian Survey 22.1 (1982): 47-55.

Copper, John F. “Taiwan in 1986: Back on Top Again.” A Survey of Asia in 1986: Part 1. Asian Survey 27.1 (1987): 81-91.

Domes, Jurgen. “Taiwan in 1991: Searching for Political Consensus.” A Survey of Asia in 1991: Part 1. Asian Survey 32.1 (1992): 42-49.

Domes, Jurgen. “Taiwan in 1992: On the Verge of Democracy.” A Survey of Asia in 1992: Part 1. Asian Survey 33.1 (1993): 54-60.

Dreyer, June Teufel. “Taiwan in 1989: Democratization and Economic Growth.” A Survey of Asia in 1989: Part 1. Asian Survey 30.1 (1990): 52-58.

Dreyer, June Teufel. “Taiwan in 1990: Finetuning the System.” A Survey of Asia in 1990: Part 1. Asian Survey 31.1 (1991): 57-63.

Gurtov, Melvin. “Taiwan: Looking to the Mainland.” A Survey of Asia in 1967: Part 1. Asian Survey 8.1 (1968): 16-20.

Gurtov, Melvin. “Taiwan in 1966: Political Rigidity, Economic Growth.” A Survey of Asia in 1966: Part 1. Asian Survey 7.1 (1967): 40-45.

Hsiung, James C. “Taiwan in 1984: Festivity, New Hope, and Caution.” A Survey of Asia in 1984: Part 1. Asian Survey 25.1 (1985): 90-96.

Hsiung, James C. “Taiwan in 1985: Scandals and Setbacks.” A Survey of Asia in 1985: Part 1. Asian Survey 26.1 (1986): 93-101.

Jacobs, J. Bruce. “Taiwan 1979: ‘Normalcy’ after ‘Normalization.’” A Survey of Asia in 1979: Part 1. Asian Survey 20.1 (1980): 84-93.

Jacobs, J. Bruce. “Taiwan 1972: Political Season.” Asian Survey 13.1 (1973): 102-112.

Jacobs, J. Bruce. “Taiwan 1973: Consolidation of the Succession.” A Survey of Asia in 1973: Part 1. Asian Survey 14.1 (1974): 22-29.

Jacobs, J. Bruce. “Taiwan 1978: Economic Successes, International Uncertainties” A Survey of Asia in 1978: Part 1. Asian Survey 19.1 (1979): 20-29.

Kallgren, Joyce K. “Nationalist China: Political Inflexibility and Economic Accommodation.” A Survey of Asia in 1963: Part 1. Asian Survey 4.1 (1964): 638-45.

Kallgren, Joyce K. “Nationalist China: Problems of a Modernizing Taiwan.” A Survey of Asia in 1964: Part 1. Asian Survey 5.1 (1965): 12-17.

McBeath, Gerald. “Taiwan in 1976: Chiang in the Saddle.” A Survey of Asia in 1976: Part 1. Asian Survey 17.1 (1977): 18-26.

McBeath, Gerald. “Taiwan in 1977: Holding the Reins.” Asian Survey 18.1 (1978): 17-28.

Plummer, Mark. “Taiwan: The ‘New Look’ in Government.” A Survey of Asia in 1968: Part 1. Asian Survey 9.1 (1969): 18-22.

Plummer, Mark. “Taiwan: Toward a Second Generation of Mainland Rule.” A Survey of Asia in 1969: Part 1. Asian Survey 10.1 (1970): 18-24.

Seymour, James D. “Taiwan in 1987: A Year of Political Bombshells.” A Survey of Asia in 1987: Part 1. Asian Survey 28.1 (1988): 71-77.

Seymour, James D. “Taiwan in 1988: No More Bandits.” A Survey of Asia in 1988: Part 1. Asian Survey 29.1 (1989): 54-63.

Tien, Hung-mao. “Taiwan in 1995: Electoral Politics and Cross-Strait Relations.” A Survey of Asia in 1995: Part 1. Asian Survey 36.1 (1996): 33-40.

Wu, Yu-shan. “Taiwan in 1993: Attempting a Diplomatic Breakthrough.” A Survey of Asia in 1993: Part 1. Asian Survey 34.1 (1994): 46-54.

Wu, Yu-shan. “Taiwan in 1994: Managing a Critical Relationship.” A Survey of Asia in 1994: Part 1. Asian Survey 35.1 (1995): 61-69.

Wu, Yu-shan. “Taiwan in 2000: Managing the Aftershocks from Power Transfer.” A Survey of Asia in 2000. Asian Survey 41.1 (2001): 40-48.

Gotta read this...

2005-02-25T19:29:00.000+08:00

Kerim Friedman's Dissertation: "Learning 'Local' Languages: Passive Revolution, Language Markets, and Aborigine Education in Taiwan"

Guowen diyi--the literacy crisis in postwar Taiwan

2004-12-27T01:56:00.000+08:00

Below I mentioned Gao Ming's article "Guowen diyi" from Weixue pian. The text of Chiang Kai-shek's message about the importance of studying the National Language has somehow managed to hide from me so far, although I've looked for it in several collections of his speeches (general speeches, speeches on education, etc.). I imagine (though I can't be 100% sure) that Chiang refers to the influence of Japanese language and culture on the people of Taiwan. This is mentioned by Gao, and it was something of a commonplace among representatives of the Nationalist government that the Japanese language and culture that was leftover from the time that Taiwan was a Japanese colony was something of a pollutant or infection that needed to be eradicated in order for Taiwanese people to become fully Chinese (again).

Hsu Hsueh-chi, in her article "The Language Problem in Postwar Taiwan, 1945-1948" (台灣光復初期的語文問題), cites several sources from the period immediately preceding and following Japan's surrender where Taiwanese people are characterized as "slaves" of Japan. She quotes a 1944 letter from Chen Yi (陳義), infamous for his role in the 228 Massacre, to Chen Lifu (陳立夫), which demonstrates Chen Yi's strong desire to use the National Language policy to "uproot 'the old enslaved psychology and build a revolutionary psychology'" (根絕「奴化的舊心理,建設革命的心理」). Evidently, by the time of Gao's article (1955), despite 10 years of carrying out the National Language policy in Taiwan, government representatives still considered the Japanese language a threat to the Sinification of the Taiwanese people.

In "Guowen diyi", Gao argues that using the same writing system gives people from different parts (東西南北各地區) a unified ethnic/national (民族) identity (意識) (39), and that the same writing system gives people from different historical periods a unified ethnic/national spirit (一貫的民族精神) (39). He argues that occupiers and traitors all know that in order to conquer (征服) their subjects or enemies, the language and writing of the conquered needs to be exterminated. He continues,

日本人佔領臺灣的期間，不准我們的臺灣同胞學習中國文字，並用種種方法(或鼓勵，或強迫)促使我們的臺灣同胞學習日文，便是這種作用。……現在臺灣從日本人的手上，回到祖國的懷抱，已經十年了。但是日文在民間，不僅沒有絕跡，還相當的流行。我們總感覺到，過去一個侵略者的幽靈，時時在威脅我們。(39-40)

Roughly, Gao is arguing that when the Japanese occupied Taiwan, they didn't permit the Taiwanese people ("our Taiwan compatriots") to study Chinese writing, and used various methods (encouragement and coercion) to make the Taiwanese learn Japanese. When Gao was writing this, Taiwan had already "returned to the mother country's embrace" for 10 years, but, he claimed, Japanese had not only not been exterminated, it was still popular. "We constantly feel the ghost of a previous invader threatening us." (Gao goes on to speak favorably of how the Korean government had outlawed the Japanese language after the Japanese invaders left.)

But Eika Tai argues that Japanese language and culture had not "enslaved" nearly as many people as the KMT believed. In fact, she limits the kinds of people who were really proficient in Japanese to the elites:

To be sure, many Taiwanese elites did learn to use Japanese superbly. Yet, even for those people, whether as a result they were Japanized is a different issue. They studied Kokugo [(Japanese) National Language] as a language of civilization so that they could acquire modern knowledge and succeed in colonial society to the fullest extent possible. But there were also Taiwanese who used their competence in the colonizer's language to liberate themselves and to challenge the goal of assimilation that Kokugo education was supposed to achieve. (529)

The use of Japanese, then, rather than being simply the sign of a "slave mentality" or a colonized psyche, became for Taiwanese people a tool for resisting domination by the KMT government. As Jiu-jung Lo notes, there is some irony in the fact that "many Taiwanese forged a close bond under political symbols smacking of Japanese colonial rule, an experience that was by no means wholeheartedly embraced by all the Taiwanese throughout fifty years of Japanese occupation" (280).

Mei Wen-Li, writing in 1963, also points to older Taiwanese intellectuals as the primary users of Japanese--in this case to point out how these people were the victims of the anti-Japanese movement in postwar Taiwan because of their lack of access to sources of knowledge. Of these older intellectuals, she writes:

Their first difficulty is language. With restricted imports of Japanese language publications these intellectuals, most of whom were educated in Japanese and can read neither Chinese nor English well, have been living in something of an intellectual vacuum. Moreover, they have no rich intellectual tradition from which to draw. When part of the Manchu empire Formosa was one of its acknowledged underdeveloped areas. Under the Japanese the percentage of Formosan students who received higher education was extremely low and those who did receive higher education were discouraged from developing an interest in the humanities or the social sciences. Many of the most talented intellectuals later sacrificed their lives in the cause of self-rule either in the struggle with the Japanese or in the massacre following the February 28th incident of 1947.

Works Cited

Gao, Ming 高明. "Guowen Diyi" 國文第一. Weixue Pian 為學篇. Taipei: Ziyou Qingnian Chuban, 1958.

Hsu, Hsueh-chi 許雪姬. "Taiwan Guangfu Chuqi de Yuwen Wenti" 台灣光復初期的語文問題 ["The Language Problem in Postwar Taiwan, 1945-1948"]. Si yu Yan 思與言 [Thoughts and Words] 29.4 (1991): 155-84.

Lo, Jiu-jung. "Trials of the Taiwanese as Hanjian or War Criminals and the Postwar Search for Taiwanese Identity." Constructing Nationhood in Modern East Asia. Ed. Kai-wing Chow, Kevin M. Doak, and Poshek Fu. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2001. 279-315.

Mei, Wen-Li. "The Intellectuals on Formosa." China Quarterly 15 (1963): 65-74.

Tai, Eika. "Kokugo and Colonial Education in Taiwan." Positions: East-West Cultures Critique 7.2 (1999): 503-40.

[updated 1/4/05, 12:26 a.m.; 1/17/04, 2:15 a.m.]

Wei xue pian (為學篇)

2004-12-10T13:51:00.000+08:00

This book, published in 1958, is part of the Ziyou qingnian xiuyang (自由青年修養) series published by the Ziyou Qingnian Magazine Press. (Ziyou qingnian, or Free Youth, was a magazine founded in Taiwan in 1950.) The 26 essays in this book, which seem intended for college-age readers, were taken from the "Qingnian Xiuyang" columns in the magazine. They include essays by Tseng Yueh-nung, Liang Shiqiu, Mou Zhongsan, Gao Ming, among others. A couple of interesting essays that I need to look at:

"Guowen diyi" (國文第一 ) by Gao Ming (高明), pages 39-42

Briefly, this article takes as its title Chiang Kai-shek's exhortation to the people of Taiwan to improve their Mandarin. Gao divides the concepts of Guowen into 3 parts: Chinese writing, Chinese discourse (中國文章), and the Chinese culture that is expressed through Chinese discourse. It contains some of the usual denunciations of what the Communists were doing to the Chinese language, and also comments on the continuing threat of the Japanese language to the complete Sinification of Taiwan. Seems to have been written in 1955.

"Zenyang tigao ziji de Guowen chengdu (怎樣提高自己的國文程度) by Zheng Mingdong (鄭明東), pages 43-48

This article reasserts the need to view Chinese as "the mother of all studies" (國文為各學科之母). Zheng covers intensive reading (精讀), extensive reading (略讀), writing, and calligraphy.

"Lun Guowen chengdu de diluo yu tigao" (論國文程度的低落與提高) by Du Chengxiang (杜呈祥), pages 49-54

This article begins with the much-bewailed "literacy crisis" that scholars claimed was facing Free China in the 1950s.

"Bianlun yu minzhu" (辯論與民主) by Wang Shoukang (王壽康), pages 76-77

The author begins by asserting an intimate connection between debate and democracy. He argues that promoting debate is the most fundamental task for promoting democracy and ridding people of pre-democratic, autocratic ways of thinking because debate can help people develop their own opinions and accomodate others' opinions.

More later...

[updated 12/10/04, 3:45 p.m.; 12/11/04, 9:37 a.m.]

Tseng on the goals of general education

2004-12-10T13:28:00.000+08:00

Below I was thinking about Tseng Yueh-nung's view of rhetoric education as expressed in his "Simple Explanation of General Education." I need to say more about that article. It gets cited in the History of Tunghai University, 1955-1980 (Tunghai Daxue xiaoshi 東海大學校史) as representative of the philosophy of education that Tseng brought to Tunghai. The History says that Tseng' s essay compares Western and Chinese thought and develops an explanation of the "true meaning" of general education.

About halfway through Tseng's article, he gets to the point. (OK, that's just testiness on my part.) On page 5, he observes that one of the keys to general education is to train students to "observe by themselves, collect information on their own, rely on themselves to make distinctions, study by themselves, draw to their own conclusions, and form their own judgments." (宏通教育中，每一重點，必使學生：自行觀察，自集資料，自力鑑別，自加研究，自作結論，自下批評。)

Tseng divides into five groups the kinds of training needed to meet the goals of teaching students to seek knowledge for themselves. These kinds of training (specific areas of study are mentioned in parentheses) will help students work toward the following goals:

1. reasoning can be correct and rigorous (logic)
2. expression can be clear and fluent (language, math, and other media for expression, such as lines and colors are used for expression in the arts)
3. research can be high-quality, careful, and objective (natural sciences, social sciences, and methodologies, such as history, philosophy, and literary methods)
4. appraisal can be wise and impartial (humanities and sciences, including the evaluation of cultural products)
5. the result of study can be harmoniously blended and thoroughly grasped, taking a complete and "synoptic view" (history, philosophy, theology)

Tseng goes on to say that the first two items relate to courses that equip students with tools (為工具性學科), and from the perspective of general education do not exist for their own sake, but rather for the sake of the other courses or areas of study (不為其本身而存在，乃為其他各科而設...). This is the "language is a tool" school of thought that governs, in Tseng's view properly governs, the way in which general education curricula are established. Invention, critical thinking, and even taste are separated from "expression."

[Updated 12/10/04, 4:03 p.m.]

Some books by Tseng Yueh-nung that are at Tunghai's library

2004-12-05T21:11:00.000+08:00

曾約農校長/陳瑞洲, 謝鶯興合編 (1998; Dewey #782.886 8025-1) [Dec. 6 Update: Found this book; it contains some of the articles mentioned below: 曾約農(一八九三至一九八六), by 吳化鵬, published in 中外雜誌 vol. 63.1 (Jan. 1998): 80-81; 曾約農 (1893-1986), by 李爾康, pub. in 傳記文學 vol. 50.5 (May 1987): 139-40; and 敬悼曾約農先生, by 李爾康, pub. in 傳記文學 vol. 50.2 (Feb. 1987): 39-42
曾約農先生言論集/林景淵編選 (1970; Dewey #073.8 4463)
漫談繙譯與寫作/曾約農撰 (1971; Dewey #811.7 8025)

Tseng also has a book called 中西文化之關係 that's available at some libraries. Will ILL it. [Dec. 6 Update: ILLed it.]

Some articles by or about Tseng Yueh-nung

2004-12-04T02:40:00.000+08:00

Somewhere there's got to be a bibliography of Tseng's works... (Note: check the Tunghai archives on Monday.) Some articles, gleaned from 中華民國期刊論文索引影像系統:

曾約農(一八九三至一九八六), by 吳化鵬, published in 中外雜誌 vol. 63.1 (Jan. 1998): 80-81; 96-98 (THU library gets this)
曾約農 (1893-1986), by 李爾康, pub. in 傳記文學 vol. 50.5 (May 1987): 139-40 (THU library gets this)
敬悼曾約農先生, by 李爾康, pub. in 傳記文學 vol. 50.2 (Feb. 1987): 39-42 (THU library gets this)

By Tseng:

原仁, in 湖南文獻 9.4 (Oct. 1981): 5-9 (THU library gets this)
中西文化之比較, in 新知雜誌, vol 3.6 (Dec. 1973): 16-22 (THU library gets this)
漫談儒家的教育觀, in 東亞季刊, vol. 3 (Jan. 1970): 13-15 (does THU library gets this?)
中西文化之比較, in 公教智識, 436 (Nov. 1969): 20-21 (THU library gets this)

Other places where Tseng is mentioned:

This article by Suncrates, which is a translator's note to an article by Lewis E. Hahn (published in Comprehensive Harmony: International Journal for Comparative Philosophy and Culture 1.2 [2003]), contains a footnote that describes Tseng's teaching style when he was teaching translation at National Taiwan University in the 1950s:

When teaching as Professor of English Literature at the National Taiwan University, Professor Tseng still adopted the British system of tutorship in higher education. Students assigned to him as tutor are welcome to have the afternoon tea at his house, once a week, as I recall. Then he would advise you on life experience as well as on study progress, thus encouraging free discussion in an informal atmosphere. He was a gracious exemplar of edification, in words and in deeds. On my work in his translation class, I remember, he put such encouraging comments: "Gifted with good ways of thinking, you will have a bright future ahead (as translator)." "Remarkable! I am pleasantly surprised that you have translated this article in the classical Chinese style (wen yen); far superior to any colloquial version (bai hua). " Once he asked me the works I was reading. I replied with Matthew Arnold's critical essay "On Englishing Homer." He was quite impressed, saying "Studying Matthew Arnold carefully, you may grasp the know-how in translation as an art."

A few notes about Tseng Yueh-nung

2004-12-02T23:39:00.000+08:00

Tseng Yueh-nung (photo from the Tunghai University website)

Tseng Yueh-nung's English name was Beauson Tseng. He was a great-grandson of Zeng Guofan (曾國藩), best known for his role in the suppression of the Taiping Rebellion. Tseng was born in 1893 in Hunan Province.

Tseng studied mining at London University (graduating in 1916) and at the Royal School of Mines. He returned to China and, with his cousin Zeng Baosun (曾寶蓀), established the Yifang School for Girls in Changsha.

He came to Taiwan by way of Hong Kong after escaping from mainland China in 1949. At first he taught English literature at National Taiwan University, then he came to Taichung to become the first president of Tunghai University in 1955. He retired from Tungahi in 1957, going on to take roles in government and education.

I'll add more to this as I have time. Here is some information on Tseng (from which much of the above was taken) can be found here (in Chinese).

Tseng seems in some ways to be a symbol of Tunghai. The main road into Tunghai is named "Beauson Road" (or 約農路). A bust of Tseng is situated in the entrance to the university's library. Tseng seems to be a locus of public memory about Tunghai, particularly in the way that the university has traditionally been viewed as a place where Chinese and Western cultures mix.

Tseng Yueh-nung on rhetoric education

2004-11-29T22:36:00.000+08:00

My dissertation has been on hold for quite a while for a number of reasons, but during midterms week at my school (or "fall break," as I like to call it), I had a little extra time to work on some diss-related stuff.

One of the things I've been working on besides lining up some interviews is working through some of the beliefs/theories behind the general education program as it was established at Tunghai in the 1950s. From what I've read, the idea of general education was quite revolutionary in Taiwan because of the strong emphasis that most programs placed on specialization. In fact, general education was controversial, even at Tunghai, because some people believed it took precious time and energy away from specialized teaching and research. Tunghai's first president Tseng Yueh-nung wrote an article entitled "A Simple Explanation of General Education" (Hongtong jiaoyu qianshi 宏通教育淺釋) that was published in 1955 in a collection entitled Collected Writings on the History of Chinese Learning (Zhongguo xueshushi lunji 中國學術史論集).

After describing the philosophies of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, he says the following about the rise of rhetoric:

希臘羅馬政治即臻全盛，日中則昃。於是道德淪亡，人懷自競之心，挾數任術，以獵取功名而致富貴。雄辯學 (rhetoric)，逐為必修之科。整體教育反失去重心，一時消極與失望，詭詐與荒瑩，籠罩全歐，不可救藥，如是者數百年。

My rough translation (feel free to make fun of it--better yet, give me suggestions for corrections):

Once Greco-Roman government reached its full prime, the sun at its zenith began its decline. Whereupon, morality was lost, and the competitive hearts of men harbored many tricks to allow them to pursue fame, wealth, and rank. The study of eloquence (rhetoric) gradually became a required subject. Education as a whole, in contrast, lost its center of gravity; at the same time, pessimism and despair, cunning and dissolution hung over all of Europe beyond redemption; thus it remained for hundreds of years.

I felt for a while that this take on rhetoric, which arguably had some effect on how Tseng saw the mission of general education at the university level, grew out of a combination of a Confucian and a Cartesian distrust of eloquence or of disputation as a way of finding the truth. (I should also not neglect to mention Tseng's Christianity--he was a Quaker.)

Recently, however, some more specific sources from late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain have come to my attention as a result of Karen Whedbee's two recent articles in Rhetoric Society Quarterly. Whedbee traces the negative reputation that classical rhetoric developed in those centuries to the anti-democratic histories that were written about ancient Greece. Some of the language of those anti-Athens histories seems echoed in Tseng's comments about the effects of rhetoric on education and morality in the classical world. A typical quote, from John Gillies, describes the rhetor in these terms:

He who could best flatter and deceive them [the lower classes] obtained most of their confidence. With such fatal qualifications, the turbulent, the licentious, and the dissolute, in a word, the orator who most resembled his audience commonly prevailed in the assembly, and specious or hurtful talents carried off the awards due to real merit. (qtd in Whedbee, "Reclaiming" 74)

I don't know if Tseng had access to writings like Gillies's, though, while he was studying in England. Or perhaps the source of Tseng's 'history' of rhetoric is more recent that Gillies, who was writing in the 1780s.

Works Cited

Tseng, Yueh-nung 曾約農. "Hongtong jiaoyu qianshi" 宏通教育淺釋 [A Simple Explanation of General Education]. Zhongguo xueshushi lunji 中國學術史論集 [Collected Writings on the History of Chinese Learning]. Vol 4. Taipei: Zhonghua wenhua chuban shiye weiyuanhui, 1955. 1-12.

Whedbee, Karen E. "Reclaiming Rhetorical Democracy: George Grote's Defense of Cleon and the Athenian Demagogues." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 34.4 (2004): 71-95.

----------. "The Tyranny of Athens: Representations of Rhetorical Democracy in Eighteenth-Century Britain." Rhetoric Society Quarterly 33.4 (2003): 65-85.